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CDC data are disappearing

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Re: CDC data are disappearing

#601

Post by johnnyanmac »

trashtester wrote: post #567
achierius wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. The restriction applies only to scrutiny of the President himself -- his agents still can be prosecuted.

And he can pardon them, without even specifying what he pardons them for. Indeed, this seems to be becoming the the norm. The US really needs to reign in the pardoning power. There are 3 areas in particular that need coverage (I'll cover pardons by the President, but the same might apply to Governors): 1) Most pardons come with a political cost, either for the president himself or his party. The main exception is jus…

Let him keep pardoning. Sometimes the best way to set new rules is to show the limits of abuse of that power in practice.

I don't think even his packed SCOTUS would appreciate Trump overturning their judgment by pardoning recently convicted agents. They still are the people who are tasked with interpreting the constitution. Push the line too hard and they will push the line back to spite you.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#602

Post by _heimdall »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #580
_heimdall wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in an attempt to at least show where the bias, if that's what it is, comes from: - Affordable Care Act - the entire Covid response - GDPR - the "TikTok Ban" act To name a few, those are all examples of us having granted larger powers to the government in hopes that they will fix problems for us that we won't fix ourselves.

Let’s take the ACA. That was designed to fix the problem “healthcare in the US is insanely expensive and insurance companies can deny coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.” How could you fix that problem individually?

My argument there wasn't actually that all of those could have done bottom up, only that they are examples of us granting the government more power and asking for a collectivist solution. That isn't always a bad thing, but it does point to the trend that I recognize (potentially due to my bias as pointed out above).

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#603

Post by johnnyanmac »

perihelions wrote: post #488
aurareturn wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side question: If Trump just pardons the people responsible, does it matter if it's illegal?

I think Trump would fire any US Attorney who forces him to actually write a pardon. The clear expectation of federal prosecutors is that it's off-limits to criminally pursue Trump functionaries carrying out his orders. He's fired 30+ AUSA's just *this week*, because they had previously prosecuted Trump allies.

I guess it's up to the states to sue the government then. Trump can't fire publicly elected state AG's.

If he's gonna try to privatize everything with "state's rights", we gotta use those state's powers against him. Using the rulebook he's bound by.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#604

Post by johnnyanmac »

listenallyall wrote: post #420
darth_avocado wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data isn’t the ultimate fact check But it is. Numbers can be twisted, but it they can easily be verified. Bias, bad sources and cherry picking can allow you to tell stories, but the data will allow you to verify those stories are indeed facts. Brain can’t really fact check things that don’t have any data.

Can data, or AI, tell me definitively who the MVP of the NFL was this season? Allen, Lamar, Saquon? The numbers certainly help when making comparisons, but they aren't the entire story, different people will come to different conclusions based on the exact same set of facts.

In theory, yes. But we're more approaching philosophy with Laplace's demon at this point.

A more realistic example: we can theoretically predict the weather weeks in advance. In reality, it's pointless because there so much data needed to collect for that, and so many events to away the weather, that's its impractical past a few days in the future.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#605

Post by johnnyanmac »

listenallyall wrote: post #517
esperent wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not relevant because the person who is MVP in a sport is an opinion. Or, to put it more bluntly, it's a marketing scheme to keep people talking about it. There's no correct answer when it comes to opinions. If the question was who scored the most points in the year, that can be answered factually by data. If the NFL was deleting all their data at the end of the season with the goal of creating arguments and sowi…

Lol - "cause of death" is often an opinion as well. Or no opinion at all - "natural causes."

No, cause of death is objective. Whether or not we have the data to figure out the truth doesn't deny the truth.

That's the point of data. To get us closer to the truth. Gravity will keep making you cling to the earth no matter your opinion. Even though as we speak we are still trying to develop models to properly understand the particles or forces behind gravity.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#606

Post by johnnyanmac »

vasco wrote: post #349
djfobbz wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data isn't the ultimate fact check - it's just numbers waiting to be twisted. Bias, bad sources, and cherry-picking turn 'facts' into fiction. Real fact-checking needs brains, not just bar graphs.

So one of the most important things to "fact check" in this election for me was the clear elder abuse of someone with advanced dementia. How do you fact check that? Because almost everyone has a grandparent and has seen what it looks like. When push comes to shove and you lie about something everyone can see and has such a visceral reaction to, it's hard to move past it. And even seeing clear as day for months it kep…

Meanwhile Biden has one bad day and everyone's saying "he's too old". While voting in the oldest president in history months later.

You can fact check it. No one wants to for whatever reason.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#607

Post by johnnyanmac »

cle wrote: post #299
breadwinner wrote: post #240

Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is a President that's adamantly opposed to fact checking [1] and has even coerced Facebook to drop fact checking. Of course they don't want data on government sites that disprove their "alternate facts". [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...

> Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is wrong IMO. Data can be missing, incomplete, biased, skewed, and even just plain wrong. Cherry-picked data can be worse than no data. The ultimate fact check is a scientific process of collecting data, modeling it, scrutinizing it and its methodology and the entities involved, contextualizing it, cross-checking, replicating, etc. What media likes to call "fact checking" to me…

>What media likes to call "fact checking" to me feels more motivated by punchy headlines and chyrons.

True. It's a good thing media doesn't collect data on that case. Just interprets it to various levels of accuracy. Those who want a better interpretation can read the data itself and learn the mechanics behind it.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#608

Post by johnnyanmac »

_heimdall wrote: post #444
breadwinner wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data can be missing, incomplete, biased, skewed, and even just plain wrong. All true of course. The solution for that is more data, not less.

Data is always lacking. More data may help you be more confident in your conclusion, but it will never be certain.

Many of us here are engineers. Similar to our work, databcollected by scientists will eventually get to "good enough" in that interpretations are nearly indistinguishable from the truth. We don't need to understand every atom in the atmosphere to predict rain coming soon, for example. We don't need to do a full body scan to see visible breast cancer lumps.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#609

Post by johnnyanmac »

hackyhacky wrote: post #572
lucb1e wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do feel like there is a limit to how biased a source can be when it tries to be based in evidence, though. Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, the climate has warmed enough that you can dump weather records into a spreadsheet and see the effect without needing to measure CO2 at all. That COVID causes disease and a warming climate causes more extreme weath…

> Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, But yet people believe these things, and will believe a source that supports them. What's obvious to you is not obvious to others.

Okay? Then you disprove their claims and their bad sources. If they don't want to understand that, there's nothing to do. They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point.

Them denying nature's truth doesn't allieve them from nature's forces.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#610

Post by johnnyanmac »

hackyhacky wrote: post #597
lucb1e wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah come on, what you've cited is obvious to everyone but a delusional 0.001%. They do not need a podium for that

You're not an American, so maybe you aren't aware how widespread conspiracy theories are in the US and how much they influence the public discourse. As a trivial example, the American Senate is currently interviewing the nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, CDC, and FDA, among other agencies. The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which…

To give a much undeserved BOTD: I don't think he'll be approved because people really believe nor even trust RFO Jr. He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that.

Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.

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